The Last Resistance
by snitchcharm
Summary: With Harry gone, the resistance movement at Hogwarts falls to Neville. But a new love complicates things. Can Neville keep hope alive under Voldemort's regime?
1. Chapter 1

Hogwarts had changed.

As Neville Longbottom trudged along the familiar corridors, he felt none of the feelings that had always accompanied him on the first day of school, no billywigs in his stomach like there had been on every September first for six years. Only a cold, hard dread remained—and grief, too, grief because the school that he had loved was gone as surely as Albus Dumbledore.

On the surface everything was the same, but the students didn't talk and laugh as they hurried to their classes, didn't gossip, didn't run to hug the friends they hadn't seen all summer. Everyone walked fast, their heads lowered and eyes fixed on the floor; they flowed around Neville like a river around a stone.

He himself was moving slowly, plodding almost. He stared straight ahead at all the pale, frightened faces, mechanically putting one foot in front of the other, autopilot taking him to Muggle Studies. The halls were fuller than usual, as Snape had used his new authority as headmaster to make attendance compulsory for all wizarding children in Britain.

But some were still absent, and their loss he felt more keenly than anything else, even with all the new arrivals. So much that he had taken for granted was now gone. At the Sorting ceremony last night, the Sorting Hat did not sing, only sounded rather mournful as it called out Houses, its croaky voice echoing sadly beneath the stormy enchanted ceiling. Perhaps it had sensed that this was no longer a place of music. No one cheered as the terrified first years made their way, quailing, down the steps to join their classmates. Although Snape sat in the engraved golden chair at the head of the staff table, he did not make a speech as the plates cleared. The feast had been devoid of conversation. Everyone at the Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, and Ravenclaw tables, and even some Slytherins, glared mutinously at Snape as he occupied the place of the man he had murdered. A few places at the staff table were vacant or filled with Death Eaters—among them Neville's second favorite teacher, Professor Burbage of the Muggle Studies department. She was conspicuously absent, and Neville had a nasty feeling that she was not on vacation in the Bahamas.

Things hadn't much improved when they had reached the Gryffindor common room. Neville had exchanged a few polite greetings with Seamus, Lavender, and Parvati, but the conversation soon flagged, weighed down as they all were by their diminished number. They all supposed that Dean and Hermione had fled from the Muggle-born Registration Committee, although Neville had his doubts about Hermione. It was widely known that Ron was at home with spattergroit.

And as for Harry...none of them had mentioned it, but Neville could tell from their expressions that they were all wondering the same thing. Why was Harry, the Boy Who Lived, the Chosen One, their _friend_, gone?

"Obviously he couldn't just come waltzing back in here now," Neville had said finally, "with all that 'Undesirable Number One' business in the _Prophet_ lately. We know that." He did not say Harry's name.

Seamus and the girls nodded their assent, but Neville could tell that they doubted the truth of it. He couldn't blame them; he hadn't entirely believed the words himself. And so with half their number gone, the seventh years had lapsed into silence, staring into the crackling fireplace.

Coming back to the present, Neville realized that is feet had carried him to the Muggle Studies classroom. He was late. Quickly, he pushed open the door and entered. This was a compulsory class now, so the small room was packed full of students, apparently of all ages and Houses. He caught sight of Ginny Weasley's fiery hair, and a second later, Luna's, the color of sunlight. He had started towards them when he was interrupted by a wheezy voice from the front of the room.

"Not so fast, Longbottom."

Alecto Carrow was short enough for Neville not to have noticed at first, but as he looked at her, he wondered how he had missed her. He knew her name from an old poster of Azkaban escapees he had seen before the fall of the Ministry. She was squat, hunched, and looked as though she might be part hag.

"Late, are you, Longbottom?" she sneered. "I'll let you off with a warning this time, 'cause you're a pureblood, but I don't like late kids. 'N fact, don't like kids at all, so watch yerself." She raised her voice, addressing the entire class. "Listen up, you lot. Here on out, if you're late, detention. Talk without bein' talked to, detention. Disobey orders, detention. You'll call me only 'Professor Carrow.' And don't ask me no questions, 'cause I don't give a rat's tail."

The class stared in silent resentment, all except for Luna, who said, "Good morning, Neville," quite pleasantly. However, she looked tired, her face paler than normal, dark circles beneath her eyes.

Alecto waved her wand, and a stack of papers rose off her desk and shot onto the desk of each student. Neville sat next to Luna and picked his copy up: Upon closer inspection, it proved to be a thick, glossy pamphlet embossed with the heading _Mudbloods and the Dangers They Pose to a Peaceful Pure-Blood Society_. A muted muttering rose amongst the students as they flipped through the booklet. Ginny, seated across from Neville, gave a small noise of outrage and shoved it across the table under Neville and Luna's noses.

"Look at this," she hissed, jabbing her finger at an illustration that depicted an ugly man, evidently a Muggle by his clothing, sneaking up behind a cherubic blonde wizarding girl, his hand outstretched towards her wand. "_Magic cannot spring from a Muggle line; thus, the Mudbloods in our midst are proven to have stolen their magical power by force_," she read in a furious whisper. "_If you know a witch or wizard who claims to be 'Muggle-born,' they may have obtained their magic by such unpleasant means. Please report any possible usurpers to the Muggle-Born Registration Commission._"

Luna gasped; Neville swore. All around the room, people were making similar discoveries, and the noise level rose from whispers to indignant exclamations to disbelieving shouts. The din grew deafening. Neville rose to his feet, shortly followed by Luna, Ginny, and all the other former members of Dumbledore's Army. Neville pulled his wand out of his pocket, his blood racing in his ears.

"Shut up! _Shut up!_" shrieked Alecto, and when the clamor only escalated, she stabbed her wand towards her students.

"_Silencio!_"

There was a bang, and silence fell. Neville was still moving his lips, still pushing air from his lungs, but something vital seemed to have been removed in between: He could not make a sound. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Luna's hand move hesitantly to her throat, her silvery eyes widening in shock, and he wished he could say something to her, sorry, maybe, for provoking Alecto?

"All right, then," shouted Alecto, standing up behind her desk. "I'm the Professor now, aren't I, and you little brats are going to listen to me now! You ain't going to run amok no more round here; you'll pay for disrespect! I know the Dark Lord, I do, and you'd better remember it!"

Neville had never wished more that looks could kill. The students' faces were blazing with anger now, and fear too.

_Stupefy!_ Neville thought, gripping his wand. But nothing happened—he had never gotten the hang of unspoken charms.

Luna, however, seemed to have no such difficulty. She pointed her wand, keeping her arm lowered as so to not attract undue attention, and mouthed _Expelliarmus_.

Alecto's wand spun out of her hand, soaring over her desk and landing with a clatter onto the stone floor. Her eyes bulged with rage.

"Which of you little swine did that?"

With her wand out of her hand, the Silencing Charm lifted, and the yells broke out again, louder than before. Alecto's piggy eyes scanned the room and fixed themselves on Neville, who was still standing tensely, wand hand raised.

"You!" she snarled. "Snape told us you had less brains than a flobberworm. Detention."

Neville glared at her. "Yes, _ma'am_," he enunciated, dripping sarcasm.

He had almost forgotten about Luna, but then she laid a gentle hand on his elbow, forcing him to look at her. "Please be careful, Neville," she cautioned, her voice soft. "The Carrows can be very unkind when provoked, you know. They've visited my father on several occasions."

"You think I don't know that? She's a Death Eater, Luna!" he retorted. It took a great effort to keep from shouting, he was so angry.

She fixed her eyes unblinkingly on his. It was a bit like having a spotlight trained on his face: an exhilarating but also slightly uncomfortable feeling. He looked down, blushing; Luna didn't even blink.

"I know," she said evenly. "But you must control yourself; we have to stay safe." She took her hand away and offered a small, sad smile.

Trying hard to slow his breathing, Neville nodded, sinking slowly back into his seat.

For the rest of the lesson, he was silent, staring resolutely past Alecto at the blank wall behind her. She sounded like a madwoman, prating about Muggles, about their viciousness and stupidity, their parasitic effect on the world. It all went in one ear and out the other.

Finally, finally, the bell sounded. The students surged in unison to their feet, stampeding to the door, whispering to each other. Neville made for the exit with enormous relief, but he hadn't gotten far when a claw-like hand came down upon his shoulder.

"Nine o'clock, Longbottom," Alecto wheezed in his ear. Neville shuddered at the feel of her hot, foul-smelling breath on his cheek. "The Great Hall. Don't forget, now."

He tore away and ran for the door.


	2. Chapter 2

7

_A/N: Thank you, thank you, thank you to reviewers Unknown, darthluna01, and especially the Critique Bard, for offering encouragement and constructive criticism!_

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Despite having promised Luna to play it safe, Neville couldn't bring himself to show up exactly on time for his detention. Ten minutes after nine found him shuffling through the doors of the Great Hall, his chin up, ready.

Or so he thought.

Dinner was over; the House tables were gone. In their absence, the Hall looked strangely, the light from floating candles not quite managing to dispel the gloom cast down from the cloudy night ceiling above. A few students were standing awkwardly, alone, in the open space: Seamus, Parvati, a Ravenclaw boy Neville didn't know, and, he was surprised to see, Susan Bones and Hannah Abbott. All of them looked nervously over their shoulders as the deep creak of the double doors reached them. Looking farther up, Neville saw that Snape was seated once again in the headmaster's chair, looking coolly out over the students' heads, looking impatient. Once, Neville would have been afraid to even be in the same room as the man he hated. Now he just felt a surge of anger at seeing him in Dumbledore's rightful place.

Seamus hurried to Neville's side. "Hey," he said in a whisper that still seemed to carry in the near-silent Hall. "I s'pose you got detention, too?"

Neville nodded. "What did you do?" he asked. The smallest trace of a smile flashed across Seamus' face.

"I mouthed off to that Carrow character," he said, rather fiercely, as though expecting Neville to tell him off. When Neville said nothing, he continued, looking slightly encouraged. "It was in Defense against the Dark Arts. 'Cept you can't really call it that anymore... but anyhow, Carrow was demonstrating Imperius on the kids, really enjoying himself, and I lost my temper. Might've cussed a bit."

Neville clapped Seamus on the back, the small thump drawing every eye in the otherwise silent room. "Good for you."

Seamus grinned. "Thanks." He glanced furtively over his shoulder, checking that Snape's watchful gaze was elsewhere. "Those Carrows, though, they're a piece of work, the two of them," he muttered, more quietly. "Amycus, or whatever his name is, he's every bit as bad as Umbridge was. And I haven't had a class with the woman yet, but I hear she's a right old hag."

Neville nodded in fervent agreement. "Too right—"

But he was interrupted as the door creaked open once again. For the second time, every head swiveled around to take in the new arrivals, and now Neville knew who they had been watching for. The Carrows strutted side by side into the Hall, their wands out and held loosely at their sides, glaring around at the students. When they passed too close to poor Hannah, she backed up so quickly that she tripped over her own feet, toppling over backwards. The squat siblings roared in laughter.

Then Parvati ran to help Hannah up. Neville felt his heart expand a little as he watched the two girls (who, as far as he knew, had never been especially close) stand with linked arms against the laughter of the Death Eaters, the dark, proud Gryffindor girl and the pretty little Hufflepuff. The grins on the Carrow's faces faded quickly. A glow of pride warmed Neville from within as they scowled at Parvati and moved on.

"You are late, Amycus, Alecto," Snape said coldly as they reached the front of the Hall. "As both of you are teachers now, I must say that I expected better."

Amycus's ugly face twisted into a defiant grimace. "Yeah, we're teachers now, Severus," he retorted. "Ain't the whole point of being a teacher is that we get to do whatever the bloody hell we want?" Brave words to the headmaster, but Neville had a hunch that both Carrows were as frightened of Snape as he himself had once been.

Snape looked down his hooked nose at his fellow Death Eaters, emanating icy disdain, not deigning to respond except for a curt "Proceed."

Sneering, Amycus turned his back on Snape. "All right, then," he called wheezily to the students. "Who's first?"

Every single one of them shrank back as one, glancing fearfully sideways at each other, none of them wanting to be the first to step forward.

"Oh, come on," Alecto giggled beside her brother. "You all know why you're here, don't you? Misbehaving little swine, you are, and you've got to be shown what comes to rule-breakers round here these days!"

She looked upward, taking in the sight of each of the four magnificent House banners adorning the four walls, her small eyes roving over the gold lion, the black badger, the bronze eagle, the silver snake. Then her gaze dropped and she scanned the small cluster of frightened students below, smirking.

"No Slytherins here, eh?" she remarked. "_They_ know how to keep their heads down... Why don't we begin with a Gryffindor, then?"

Her eyes flitted past Seamus, past Parvati, and landed on Neville. Her lip curled upward.

"_Where dwell the brave at heart_," she recited mockingly. "Get up here, Longbottom."

His feet felt as heavy as rocks glued to the ends of his legs, but Neville obeyed accordingly. To get to the Carrows, he had to pass first his fellow students, who were all watching with mixed pity and trepidation in their gazes. Then it was across a seemingly vast no-man's-land, empty as a desert, his footsteps echoing like cannon shots off the stone floor. Then up the steps, and he was standing in front of Alecto.

Her face stretched into a grotesque leer that was probably meant to be a smile, she raised her wand—it took all of Neville's self-control not to lunge for his own, but he abstained—and then she said, slowly and deliberately, "_Petrificus Totalus_."

A shock passed instantly through Neville's body, as if someone had pressed an electrified rod to his spine, and the Great Hall tilted around him. He heard a collective gasp of shock issue from the students, and then the back of his head hit the stone floor hard. Blinking away the starburst of pain that exploded behind his eyes, his body limp and unresponsive, he dangled half on and half off the steps at the front of the Hall, forced to gaze up at Alecto's now-towering figure.

"Longbottom here defied me," he heard her say from afar. "He tried to hex me in class. Now, we can't have that, can we?"

And then: "_Crucio!_"

Had his jaw not been locked tightly shut, Neville would have screamed: the second time experiencing Cruciatus was no better than the first; this was just as bad as when Bellatrix Lestrange had tortured him in the Department of Mysteries so long ago. As Alecto jerked her wand ruthlessly, his blood was boiling, burning in his veins, there was a spike driving deep into his head... his bones were melting—flames licked over every inch of his skin, and it went on...

...and on...

...and in the distance, a galaxy away, someone was screaming, and he was going to die, surely he was about to die, because he could not live like this, he couldn't, no one could... and he had to die, wanted to die, and this, this fire, was the last conscious thing his mum and dad had ever known...

And then it was over. Neville lay facedown and shaking on the ground, his cheek pressed up against the blessedly cool stone, but his mind was far away, in a place where flaming doors spun dizzyingly around him, where exploding glass spheres releases voices that dissolved like ash on the wind, where a veil in an archway shivered in a wind that did not exist...

Finally, he came back to himself, soaked in sweat and quite unable to move. He lay still for several long moments, trying to still his trembling. Above him he heard heavy panting that had to be Alecto's, but he didn't hear a sound from the other side, the students: They might have stopped breathing. He summoned the strength to lever himself up on his elbows and knees, and then sat up and looked around. The watching students were all varying shades of grey; Hannah, in particular, looked as though she might pass out at any second.

Then a noise from behind made him turn around. Alecto was squatting beside him, a mocking simper hoisted onto her face. "Did that hurt, boy?" she asked, quietly enough so that only he could hear her. "Did it make you sorry?"

Neville straightened up, ignoring the protesting of his still-weak knees.

"No," he said. "No, it didn't."

He moved stiffly towards the students, standing as straight as possible. Seamus ran to meet him when he was halfway there, and they made their way back to the little group, one boy supporting the other. Neville was now a good six inches taller than Seamus, but he didn't seem to mind.

The people closed around Neville the minute he got in range, forming a sort of protective bubble. Whispers of "Are you all right?" and "Oh, my God" zipped through the ring.

"I'm okay," Neville reassured them, over and over and over. "I'm fine." He still felt dizzy, and a little sick, but the shivering was beginning to subside.

The general relief, however, didn't last. All the smiles that had appeared when Neville returned safely slid away, because Amycus Carrow called out another name, and Susan Bones walked up to the steps.

Neville briefly considered casting a Shield Charm between Alecto and her new victim, but he doubted that he could pull it off silently, and in his heart he knew it would likely only goad her into punishing Susan and the others that much more viciously. So he could only watch helplessly as she too fell under the curse, jerking as Alecto's wand danced gleefully. The agony on Susan's face was awful to see, but the obvious glee on Alecto's was even worse.

When finally her turn was up, and Susan got shakily to her feet, Neville went to lead her to the door. The sooner she got back to the Hufflepuff dormitory, the better. But Amycus's croak stopped him.

"Oh, no, you don't," he said. "You're staying right here until we're finished, all of you."

So Neville and the others had no choice but to stand and watch as the Carrows meted punishment to one after the other. Eventually, Alecto seemed to reach the conclusion that her Cruciatus could have more effect were it not silent, so she stopped doing the Full-Body Bind on each unfortunate beforehand. The screams echoed through the Hall. Neville didn't know who he pitied more—the growing number of people that slumped along the wall beside him and Susan, nursing their bruises and murmuring inadequate words of comfort to each other—or the dwindling few still waiting for their names to be called, pale as parchment, too frightened to speak. Again and again Alecto's wand fell, and more and more people joined Neville and the others by the wall, their faces more lined than they had been before, a terrible new knowledge in their eyes. At long last, every student in the Hall had been subjected to the Carrows' wrath.

It was nearly ten-thirty. Amycus made an unapologetic, long-winded speech concerning the importance of following rules and recognizing authority that no one had the strength or will to listen to. They were dismissed, and filed out to the entrance hall together. No one spoke. What was there to say, after all?

As he started up the grand staircase alongside Seamus and Parvati, Neville knew that anger would come later, and plenty of it. But he was numb to emotion at the moment, too exhausted to feel anything more than his throbbing head and aching legs. He was out of breath after just two floors.

Then a voice from below called his name. "Neville! _Neville!_"

_I won't be able to update for about a week (darn band camp!) but hopefully I'll be able to as soon as I get back. Stick with me, and please take two minutes to make my day and leave a review!_


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